In sad incident, these people fell asleep without turning off coal heater, owing to severe cold. The area residents informed police about the incident, who rushed to the scene and later called Rescue 1122 to shift the injured and the dead to nearby hospital.

The deceased were identified as Shahbaz son of Liaquat Ali, 27, Irshad Ali son of Mukhtiar Ahmed, 25, and Haider Ali, 15, while Muhammad Irshad son of Khurshid Ahmed, 28, and Liaquat Hussain son of Wazir Khan, 24.

According to Station House Officer Police Station Sadiqabad, Syed Tahir Kazmi, the incident took place at a small furniture factory located at Ghausia Chowk, Dhoke Kala Khan. “In preliminary investigation, it appears to be a case of accidental death due to suffocation but we will wait for the postmortem report before closing the probe. There were no external injuries on the body of the deceased.

Police called Rescue 1122 immediately and entered the room by breaking open the door and transported the dead bodies and injured to hospital.

A Rescue 1122 rescuer, who was the part of rescue operation, told this scribe that some area residents or friends of the ill-fated labourers went to the workshop at 6:00am and knocked at the door to awake them up. The locals informed police after no response from inside despite several knocks at the door.

Rescue 1122 shifted the injured persons to Benazir Bhutto Hospital (BBH) for treatment while the dead were moved to District Headquarter Hospital for postmortem. The condition of two injured was stated to be out of danger.

Till filling of this report, doctors were busy conducting the autopsy of the deceased. Heart moving scenes could be witnessed outside DHQ as a large number of relatives of the dead people gathered there to mourn the deaths of their beloved ones.